Merchant Crab

As the sun began its way down the horizon, announcing the fast approaching dusk, the determined crab attempted for the third time to dislodge the firmly stuck wizard from the ground, but with no success. The body was not only too tightly held in place, but also too stiff to be maneuvered by Balthazar. No matter how much he tried to wiggle one of his limbs out, they wouldn’t give in.

“Bah! No use, this is getting me nowhere.” He finally conceded, turning to the other deceased adventurer.

“Let’s see if you’re more cooperative.”

Grabbing each ankle with a pincer, Balthazar began trying to use all his weight to leverage the body out of its resting spot, but it barely budged.

“Oof, you’re heavier than you look, buddy.”

Having already taken all the items the adventurer was carrying earlier, including his armor, there wasn’t much else Balthazar could do to reduce the man’s weight any further, except perhaps removing his remaining clothes, for what little difference that would make.

“No. Not doing that. I’m perfectly aware I may not be wearing any clothes myself, but I still got a sense of self-respect.”

Accepting the fact that simply pulling wasn’t cutting it, Balthazar shuffled his naked backside, heading to the center of the pond, where all the items were.

“Hmph,” he muttered, “I’m sure I put it here somewhere.”

Searching through his newly acquired collection of goods, he pushed a pincer under a pile of animal leathers, blindly fishing for something.

“Got it!”

Pulling his arm out, he held it up victoriously, holding a small metal shovel by its wooden handle.

Skittering back to the other side, Balthazar began looking for a good spot around the wizard’s body.

“Right, now all I have to do is dig up some dirt, cover you both up, and let the worms sort the problem out.”

Choosing a soft dirt area with some short grass covering it, he awkwardly tried pressing the shovel down into it. Using his other pincer to aid him, he attempted to hold the handle between his large claws, but in doing so, it slipped from his grasp and fell flat on the ground.

“Argh, stupid thing!”

Balthazar tried to pick the shovel back up, but his pincers being too massive for the thin handle caused it to keep slipping and dropping on the dirt time after time.

“Screw this!” he finally shouted, pent up rage erupting from him. “These things were made for tiny, fragile little human hands. They can’t handle proper appendages like mine.”

Stomping his little crab legs around the shore, Balthazar looked down at one of the more shallow pools that formed within the pond, spotted a small fish with vivid red scales that reflected the dim light of the sunset, and with one precise strike impaled it with his right pincer.

Bringing it up from the water, he examined his catch proudly.

“Who needs tools when your pincers are already the best tools you could ask for, anyway?”

Shoving the fish in his mouth, he began chomping on it vigorously. He was prone to comfort eating, occasionally.

“If I can’t do something about those two eyesores soon, they’ll scare away other adventurers with their smell.” Balthazar kicked some grains of sand into the water. “Which would have been perfectly fine by me before, the less they bothered my home the better, but now I actually want to lure them in, so I can learn more about their mysterious pie.”

His mouth began watering and his eyes drifting away, his thoughts going to his earlier memories of tasting pie, when the sound of rushing footsteps alerted him to an approaching figure by the stone road.

Turning his attention back to where the two dead bodies were, he could tell someone was heading right for them.

“Damn it, this is terrible timing. Who’s even still prancing about this close to nightfall, anyway?”

The answer to his question appeared, as a very tall man covered in black robes anxiously made his way closer to the dead wizard. He wore a mantled hood that framed his sickly white face, composed of thin lips, a flat nose, and two bulging eyes above deep dark circles that contrasted horribly against his pale skin, and gave him an even more manic look of someone who hadn’t slept properly in a long time.

As he arrived next to the body still firmly attached to the ground, he knelt down, pulling his bony hands with long, slim fingers ending in very dirty nails out of his robe’s sleeves, and began carefully holding and checking the dead wizard’s arm and wrist, almost as if checking its pulse.

Balthazar observed the stranger from the side of the pond with an expression of slight disgust, as the man moved over to the other adventurer with a pep to his step, got down on his knees, the dirt all over his robes seemingly not bothering him, and let out an excited “Oooh!” between the nervous smile on his face as he gently pressed and felt the dead adventurer’s ribs.

“Great, is it weirdo hour now?” Balthazar said to himself.

Turning his sight to get a better look at the figure, he noticed his monocle display a label above the man’s head:

[Level 9 Necromancer]

"So this thing can examine more than just items, it can identify beings, too. That could be useful," Balthazar quietly said, while peering through the lens. “I’m not exactly thrilled about it, but I did ask for new adventurers to come by, so I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Let’s see if this works out.”

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Taking a deep breath and stepping forward, the crab approached the necromancer with a straight posture, hoping the speech skill really did what he was hoping it did.

“Hey there.”

Balthazar winced as his words came out much more blunt than he intended them to sound. This was going to be awkward, he was sure of it.

The pasty looking man turned abruptly to Balthazar, eyes bulging out even more than before, the nervous smile gone from his face, looking for whatever interrupted his careful toe examination. Locking eyes with the crab now standing at face level with his crouched figure, the necromancer spoke with a raspy voice.

“These yours?”

He pointed his morbid looking index finger at the wizard, and then at the other dead adventurer.

Balthazar dry swallowed, and felt a brief appreciation for not having a neck that gave it away in that moment. This guy not only seemed unfazed that a crab had just talked to him, but he was now interrogating him with uncomfortable questions.

What was he supposed to answer to that? Was it some kind of accusation? Were they even his, technically? They were on his property, and it’s not like anyone else was claiming them, but did he want to admit ownership of two adventurer corpses to another adventurer? Would he think Balthazar killed them? And would he react aggressively if so? Or maybe he would be intimidated. That could work in his favor.

“Yeah, they are,” he finally responded, his answer sounding far more aggressive than he had planned.

“How much?” the necromancer quickly replied.

“Huh?”

“How much for the two of them?”

The necromancer stood up, Balthazar’s eyes following him, still dumbfounded.

“You want to… take them?” he asked the tall figure, who seemed to grow impatient.

“Yes. How much do you want for them?” he responded, pulling a familiar-looking purse from his black robes, producing a clinking sound as he did it.

As if something had clicked in his head, Balthazar abandoned his astonishment and changed demeanor. “Ah, well… how much are you willing to offer for them?”

“Fifty gold for this one.” The man pointed at the face down body under him. “And forty for the other one. It has a lot of broken bones.”

“A hundred gold for both, take it or leave it,” Balthazar declared with determination.

“Argh, fine, take it,” the necromancer said, tossing the entire coin purse at the crab’s feet. “And you got anything to wrap them with?”

“Hmm… I could work something out.”

Balthazar walked across the pond’s stones, to his loot pile at the center, and returned holding two rolled up rugs in his pincers, above his shell.

“Here. Five gold,” the crab said, while dropping the two rolls.

The pale man produced another coin purse from his pocket and began counting coins out of it.

“Each,” Balthazar added.

With a grumble, the necromancer took fifteen coins and dropped them in a pile in front of his pincers. “And I’m taking the shovel too.”

“All yours.”

Balthazar was happy to see the dumb thing gone, anyway.

Changing expressions with unsettling ease, the necromancer smiled creepily, with yellow teeth peering between his purplish lips, as he began unrolling one of the rugs and moving the body of the first adventurer Balthazar had seen that day over it.

After dislodging the wizard’s corpse with some difficulty and a few bone cracking sounds, he now had both adventurers firmly wrapped into their respective rugs. Standing up, visibly satisfied, he wiped his dirty hands on his already filthy robes and his forehead on the sleeve.

“I should get going,” the man said nervously. “These aren’t getting any fresher.”

“For two more gold, I’ll throw in a couple of fresh pine cones for the smell.”

The necromancer looked at the crab, the corpse rolls, and then his pocket.

“Give them to me,” he agreed, tossing another two coins.

After placing a pine cone inside each rug, the necromancer picked both up with difficulty and put one over each of his shoulders, before starting to make his way off the road and into the quickly darkening plains.

“Can’t say it was a pleasure doing business with you, but so long, creepy fellow,” Balthazar said under his breath, as he watched the frail looking man zigzagging into the sunset, doing his best to balance the two corpses. “Heh, that guy needs more points in Strength, I say.”

[Items traded. Experience gained.]

[[Corpse x2] traded for [100 Gold]]

[[Embroidered Rug x2] traded for [10 Gold]]

[[Shovel] traded for [5 Gold]]

[[Stale Pine Cone x2] traded for [2 Gold]]

[You have reached Level 4!]

With excitement running through him, Balthazar scanned the lines of text in front of his eyes, nodding slightly as he read them. He couldn’t avoid noticing that this time he had traded more things than before, yet still had only gotten a single level. It didn’t help that this whole thing didn’t exactly tell him how much experience was given or needed.

After a moment of reflection, he figured each level would probably require more of it than the last. It made the most sense to him. Besides, none of these items were considered “high-value” as his previous trade was. Only natural, as two dead bodies and some random crap he had lying around were in no way comparable to a priceless [Slice of Apple Pie].

“The pie!” Balthazar shouted, with a jump.

He had forgotten to make any inquiries about the one thing he was doing all that for. But maybe that was a good subconscious decision, as he was not really sure he would want anything edible coming from a necromancer, especially one as eerie looking as that one was.

What he didn’t mind taking from him, however, were all these new shiny gold coins. A suitable consolation prize for his lack of pie.

It must have been his lucky day, seeing as first he finds out adventurers do away with delicious pie in exchange for stupid swords, and then he also discovers there are some who will willingly clean up his backyard of inconveniences and pay him for it with beautiful, shiny coins to boot. He should have started taking advantage of those chumps long ago.

Eager to look at his earnings, he swiped the notification out of his sight for the moment, as he hastily made his way to his hiding hole. Taking his other coin purse from his hiding spot, Balthazar painstakingly split the coins between the two purses, a slow and methodical process with his large pincers, but one he somehow enjoyed. Looking at his two coin purses through his monocle, he saw that he now had a total of 129 gold coins.

“I wonder how many more of these would a slice of pie be worth…”

With the sun now no longer visible in the sky and darkness swiftly covering the land, Balthazar decided it was time to get some sleep. The level up screen would surely still be there in the morning and he could look at it with fresher eyes, rather than his currently sleepy ones. It had been a very long and eventful day, and if things went the way he was planning, tomorrow would be too, but with fewer abrupt deaths. Hopefully.

Digging lazily into the sand, Balthazar began lulling himself to sleep.

The cloudy sky concealed the moon behind it, only allowing its light to peer through for brief moments at a time, keeping the pond in a mostly quiet darkness.

A soft rustling of feathers sounded from atop a tree, a pair of black eyes momentarily shining under the moonlight, attentively examining the crab and his surroundings with great interest.

But the crab was none the wiser, as he was already snoring profoundly, with many thoughts of delicious pie and shiny coins populating his dreams.